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We are happy to announce the public release of Cazasteroides, an app aimed at the detection of asteroids. Visit www.cazasteroides.org for more information. The application has been designed as a video-game in order to make it more attractive. Active users are rewarded with points that can later be spent from the app for the teleoperation of the various astronomical experiments of the GLORIA network.
Have a look to the presentation video:

The 27/28 September 2015 Total Lunar Eclipse is approaching (check HERE for visibility).
For sure there are questions you would like to ask to the Moon. We have created a team of « lunatics » able to answer for it.

The BOOTES-3 dome at its new site, NIWA’s Lauder station in Central Otago (New Zealand). Credits: M. Jelinek
(ASU-CAS) and the BOOTES-3 Team (IAA-CSIC/Auckland U./NIWA).

While waiting for the NASA New Horizons spacecraft to reach Pluto in less than two weeks (closest distance will be 12,500 kilometers), in this time-lapse video you can see Pluto occultating a star. The images were taken with the GLORIA telescope BOOTES-3, recently moved to NIWA’s Lauder station in Central Otago (New Zealand). Watch the star in the centre closely. You will see it becoming dimmer and dimmer and then it gets brighter again as Pluto moves in front of it (see also the image on the left).

After more than a year without Total Solar Eclipses (the last was on November 3, 2013), the one occurring on March 20, 2015 will see the shadow of the Moon touching Earth’s surface only in two arctic lands: Faroe and Svalbard Islands.
From Europe only a partial eclipse can be observed, with the peak of solar disk occultation occurring in Iceland, Ireland, Scotland and Norway. For example in north Spain the solar disk coverage will be about 70%.

Shelios and GLORIA have chosen as final destination for the Eclipse watching the Faroe Islands (Denmark), located in the heart of the « Gulf Stream » in the North Atlantic (62° N) northwest of Scotland, halfway between Norway and Iceland. The expedition is coordinated by Dr. Miquel Serra-Ricart (IAC).
The eclipse observing site will be the Centre for Maritime Studies (University of the Faroe Islands) located in the archipelago’s capital, Torshavn. The event will be transmitted live on the sky-live.tv website.
The total duration of the eclipse is 2h 14m. The totality duration at Faroe Islands will be 2m 46s. However the live broadcasting will last 15 minutes in total. There will be two live connections on March 20th:

Connection 1: with a total duration of 5 minutes at 8:45-8:50 UT (9:45 to 9:50 CET) coinciding with the maximum of the partial occultation in Europe.Connection 2: with a total duration of 10 minutes at 9:35-9:45 UT (10:35 to 10:45 CET) to encompass the period of total eclipse.

The NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) detected an unusual comet skimming past the sun between Feb 18-21, 2015. The Comet C/2015 D1 (SOHO) is interesting because it is not part of any known family of comets. Furthermore, the vast majority of these sungrazer comets that come close enough to the sun usually evaporate in the intense sunlight. This comet passed within 3.5 million kms of the sun’s surface. Did it disintegrate as ISON comet in late 2013 or did survive to the heat of the Sun and gravitational tides?

Here is the answer: above is the 400 mm f2.8 combined image (19x30s) obtained on Feb 27, 2015 at the BOOTES-1 station. It reveals that the comet has survived the perihelion passage as a ghost comet, which means without an apparent nucleus. This is the first image obtained after the perihelion, as far as we know. Stay tuned for new observations!